Interview with Author – Adam Graham

Author Bio:

I was born in Northern Idaho and spent my childhood bouncing around as my dad was an itinerant preacher. I spent several years living in a 1963 School Bus painted green and reddish brown. While travels carried us to more than 40 states, most of my childhood was spent in the Northwest: Idaho, Montana, Washington, and Oregon. I eventually ended up in Kalispell, Montana where I graduated from Flathead Valley Community College with an AA degree in General Studies with a specialty in Journalism.

I continued a long western tradition of importing beautiful women from back east when I married my wife Andrea., who is also a fabulous writer in her own right and had co-author credits on my first two books and is the reason why my work is readable in standard English.

I’ve done quite a bit of political activism and journalism writing for sites like PJMedia.com, but that’s kind of taken a back seat to writing fiction for now.

What inspires you to write?

In short. Everything.

Though, let me elaborate with a few examples. I got short story ideas from two straight sermons in Church. One was a sci-fi retelling of one Jesus’ parables. While the other involved a church made up of Androids.

I watched one episode of a TV show with a character who I found to be so wrong and revolting that I created an entire superhero universe and wrote a ten part series about it.

For my book Tales of the Dim Knight, the spark that started me writing the thing was rewatching The Tick v. Season One.

I got inspired to write my unpublished novel Two Sides of the Hill based on things I’d heard hanging around preachers as a kid.

I have a prepublished detective novel that was inspired by my love of detective fiction and the Herman Cain “scandals.”

There’s a spark everywhere and I got to keep my ears and heart open because boom, there could be another story.

Tell us about your writing process.

I really begin with an idea. I usually know where I’m going in general, but there’s no written outline, but I have an my idea in my head usually my mental checklist of stuff that’s going to happen.

For example in Powerhouse Hard Pressed, I knew coming in that my hero would encounter characters like the Boomerang Bloke, and the Silver Medial. I didn’t know how I’d work them all in. When I sit down, I’m really connecting dots of things I want to be the story and making it all make sense. Particularly with comedy in my novels, I really work hard just to make the jokes fit.

When I’m writing, I really try not to edit my work too much. My wife is someone who edits as she goes and it works for her, but if I do it, I’m going to get bogged down. I have to fly and leaving the editing for later.

When I work through a piece, I’ll edit it usually three times. The first couple times, I read silently and the third edit, I read through the whole thing out loud. Somewhere in the middle of that, my wife will go and do her developmental edit on the piece, and then we try and get a proofreader.

For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?

I listen.

I think if I heard an audible voice I’d freak out, but I do get general impressions about the character and the way the story should be told. I realize important background and it does change the story as I understand who these characters are.

What advice would you give other writers?

Be careful who you take advice from and pay attention because there’s so much advice that’s cited as absolutes that are really style preferences.

How did you decide how to publish your books?

When I was growing up, I loved the Muppet Movie and at the end of it Orson Welles as Lew Lord tells secretary to draft the standard rich and famous contract for Kermit the Frog and Friends.

Those of sort things may happen in music and acting, but I’m convinced they do not happen in writing. The more I study the publishing industry, the less I’m convinced that there’s value in mainstream publishing for a lot of writers.

My work in the genres I’ve written has never been the most popular, they’ve never been low-hanging fruit for the publishing industry: faith based speculative fiction and men’s fiction. Even though there are some publishers of faith based speculative emerging, there are still only so many slots, and still only so much that these new publishers can do.

So, my first book was published by a small press called, Splashdown Books. Now, I’m walking a more or less independent basis. I like the speed of it, I like the ownership I have over the results and over the process. I feel very competent to manage that and enjoy the freedom of being able to find my own audience.

What do you think about the future of book publishing?

The future should be positive. We have a lot of opportunities for writers to reach their audience and it should be a fun ride.

What do you use?

Professional Cover Designer, Beta Readers

What genres do you write?

Religious Speculative Fiction, Superhero, Myster

What formats are your books in?

Both eBook and Print

Website(s)

Author Home Page Link

Link To Author Page On Amazon

Your Social Media Links

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2940207.Adam_Graham

http://www.twitter.com/idahoguy

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